Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty

by Imbert de Saint-Amand

Weary of the attempts they had been planning for six months, and which never came to anything, the conspirators might possibly have given them up altogether if a circumstance which they considered providential had not come to rekindle their regicidal zeal. The last masked ball of the season was to be given in the Opera-house on the night of March 16-17, and it was known that Gustavus would be present. To strike the monarch in the midst of the festival, in order to chastise him for his love of pleasure, was an idea which charmed the assassins. Moreover, the mask alone could embolden them; they thought that if the august victim were enveloped in a domino they need no longer dread that royal prestige which had more than once caused them to recoil.

Gustavus was counselled to be on his guard. The young Count Louis de Bouillé, who was then at Stockholm, and who had been informed by a letter from Germany that the King was about to be assassinated, begged him to profit by the warnings reaching him from every quarter. Gustavus replied that he would rather go blindly to meet his fate than torment himself with the numberless precautions which such suspicions would demand. "If I listened," added he, "to all the advice I receive, I could not even drink a glass of water; besides, I am far from believing in the execution of such a plot. My subjects, although very brave in war, are extremely timid in politics. The successes I expect to gain in France, the trophies of which I shall bring back to Stockholm, will speedily augment my power by the confidence and general respect which will be their result."

Meantime the fatal hour was approaching. The masked ball of March 16 was about to open. Before going there, Gustavus took supper with a few of the persons belonging to his household. While he was at table he received a note, written in French and unsigned, in which he was entreated not to enter the playhouse, where he was about to be stricken to death. The author of the note urgently recommended the King not to make his appearance at the ball, and, if he persisted in going, to suspect the crowd which would press around him, because this gathering was to be the prelude and signal of the blow aimed at him. The really bizarre thing about this was that the man who wrote these lines was himself one of the conspirators, Count de Lilienhorn.

"It is impossible to tell," says the Marquis de Bouillé in his Memoirs, "whether his conscience wished to acquit itself in this manner towards the King, to whom he owed everything, without forfeiting his word to his party, or whether, knowing the fearless character of this prince, he did not offer his anonymous advice as a bait to his courage. It certainly produced the latter effect." Gustavus made no reflections on reading this note, and went fearlessly to the ball.

The orchestra is playing wildly. The dances are animated. The hall, adorned with flowers, sparkles under the glow of the chandeliers. Gustavus appears for a moment in his box. It is only then that he shows to Baron d'Essen, his first equerry, the anonymous note he had received while at supper. That faithful servant begs him not to go down into the hall. Gustavus disregards the prudent counsel. He says that hereafter he will wear a coat of mail, but that, for this time, he is perfectly determined to be reckless about danger. The King and his equerry go into the saloon in front of the royal box, where each puts on a domino. Then they enter the hall by way of the stage. There are men essentially courageous, who love danger for its own sake. Gustavus is one of them. Hence he takes pleasure in braving all his assassins. As he is crossing the greenroom with Baron d'Essen on his arm, "Let us see," says he, "whether they will really dare to kill me." Yes, they will dare it. The moment that the King enters he is recognized in spite of his mask and his domino. He walks slowly around the hall, and then goes into the pit, where he strolls about during several minutes. He is about to retrace his steps, when he finds himself surrounded, as had been predicted, by a group of maskers who get between him and the officers of his suite. Several black dominos approach. They are the assassins. One of them, Count de Horn, lays a hand on his shoulder: "Good day, fine masker!" he says. This Judas salute, this ironical welcome given by the murderers to their victim, is the signal for the attack. On the instant, Ankarstroem fires on the King with a pistol loaded with old iron.

Gustavus, struck in the left hip, cries, "I am wounded!" The pistol, which had been wrapped in wool, made only a muffled report, and the smoke spreading throughout the room, the crowd does not think of a murder, but a fire. Cries of "Fire! fire!" augment the confusion. Baron d'Essen, all covered with his master's blood, helps him to gain a little box called the OEil-de-Boeuf, and from there a salon, where he is laid upon a sofa. Baron d'Armfelt orders the doors of the theatre to be closed, and every one to unmask. A man, brazening it out, lifts his mask before the officer of police, and says to him with assurance, "As for me, sir, I hope that you will not suspect me." It is Ankarstroem, the assassin. He goes out quietly. But, after the crime was committed, his weapons, a pistol and a knife like that of Ravaillac, had fallen on the floor. A gunsmith of Stockholm will recognize the pistol and declare that he had sold it a few days before to a former officer of the guards, Captain Ankarstroem. It is the token which will cause the arrest of the assassin, and his punishment by the penalty of parricides,—decapitation and the cutting off of his right hand.

The King showed admirable calm and resignation during the thirteen days he had still to live. He asked with anxiety if the murderer had been arrested, and being answered that his name was not yet known: "Ah! God grant," said he, "that he may not be discovered!" As soon as the first bandages were put on, the wounded man was taken to his apartments at the castle. There he received his courtiers and the foreign ministers. When he saw the Duke d'Escars, who represented the brothers of Louis XVI. at Stockholm: "This is a blow," said he, "which is going to rejoice your Parisian Jacobins; but write to the Princes that if I recover from it, it will change neither my sentiments nor my zeal for their just cause." In the midst of his sufferings he preserved a dignity above all praise. Neither recriminations nor murmurs issued from his lips. He summoned to his death-bed both his friends and those who had been among the number of his enemies, but would have been horrified to have been accomplices in a crime. When the old Count de Brahé, leader of the nobles of the opposition, presented himself, Gustavus said, as he pressed him in his arms: "I bless my wound, since it has brought back an old friend who had withdrawn from me. Embrace me, my dear count, and let all be forgotten between us."

The fate of his son, who was about to ascend the throne at the age of thirteen, was the chief preoccupation of the King. "Let them put me on a litter," cried he; "I will go to the public square and speak to the people." And he said to Baron d'Armfelt: "Go, and like another Antony, show the bloody vestments of Cæsar." It was also to D'Armfelt that he said as he was signing with his dying hand his commission as Governor of Stockholm: "Give me your knightly word that you will serve my son as faithfully as you have served me." He made his confession to his grand-almoner: "I fear," he said to him, "that I have no great merit before God, but at least I am sure that I have never done harm to any one intentionally." He meant to receive the sacraments according to the Lutheran form, and to have the Queen brought to him, as he had not seen her since his illness. But while seeking sleep in order to tranquillize his mind before this emotion, he found the slumber of death, March 29, 1792, at eleven in the morning. He was forty-six years old.

Thus terminated the brilliant and stormy career of the prince on whom the Marquis de Bouillé has pronounced the following judgment: "His manners and his politeness rendered him the most amiable and attractive man in his country, although the Swedes are naturally intelligent. He had a vivid imagination, a mind enlightened and adorned by a taste for letters, a masculine and persuasive eloquence, and an easy elocution even when speaking French; useful and agreeable acquirements, a prodigious memory, polite and affable manners, accompanied by a certain oddity which did not displease. His strong and ardent soul was enkindled with an inordinate love of glory; but a chivalrous spirit and loyalty dominated there. His sensitive heart rendered him clement, when he ought, perhaps, to have been severe; he was even susceptible of friendship, and this prince has had and has preserved friends whom I have known, and who were worthy to be such. He had a firm and decided character, and, above all, that resolution so necessary to statesmen, without which wit, prudence, talents, experience, are not only useless, but often injurious."